Going HD, decisions, decisions!
Discussion
I've been to the excellent Roy Jowett store in Colne on Monday to demo a new plasma tv or a new projector (pj)
I looked at the panasonic x10 and g10 models in 42" guise, and the mitsubishi 5500 pj.
David from Roy's was excellent, showing me all the various picture formats on the plasmas, then explaining the various functions and pros and cons of the two sets. I watched blueray first on both tv's, and was very impressed with the picture quality of the g10, while the x10 wasn't that far behind, but a little grainier. We then watched terrestrial tv, and the x10 was much better than the g10 for that. Then finally we watched a copy of iron man I'd taken along on normal dvd. On the x10 it looked better than on the g10, this playing through a sony 350 blueray player.
My conclusion after all that was unless I'm ready to invest heavily into a number of HD sources, the g10 wouldn't be worth the money in the short term. The x10 on the other hand was excellent for normal broadcast tv, did a great job of upscaling a dvd and was respectable for blueray content.
Food for thought.
So, after that lot, we went upstairs into the pj room to view the 5500.
WOW! Bloody amazing was all I could say
Straight out of the box, sat right next to my viewing position. I was viewing a massive screen with as good quality as the g10 from downstairs. I also couldn't even hear the pj, and it was about a foot away from my ear!
The picture on blueray hd 1080p was brilliant, much much better than my poor sony vpl hs1 I've got atm.
No demo of tv on this though, but that wasn't a problem and not what I'd be buying it for anyway. However, as before, we ran the dark night on dvd through, and again it looked pretty damn good.
I am blown away by the quality of this unit which retails at not much more than the g10.
So, I've now got to make my mind up which to buy
I'd love both a g10 for day to day viewing and gaming, but I'd also need a blueray player, sky hd and all those associated costs, whereas the pj would just need a blueray player and I'd make do with my current panasonic crt and sky+ until I could afford the update to hd there.
I think the pj has the edge atm though, as there's nothing to beat the bigscreen picture that only a pj can provide in a darkened room with 5.1 blasting your neighbours out!
A big thanks to David @ Roy Jowetts who knew this topic like the back of his hand, and answered all of my dumb questions with skill and knowledge.
I looked at the panasonic x10 and g10 models in 42" guise, and the mitsubishi 5500 pj.
David from Roy's was excellent, showing me all the various picture formats on the plasmas, then explaining the various functions and pros and cons of the two sets. I watched blueray first on both tv's, and was very impressed with the picture quality of the g10, while the x10 wasn't that far behind, but a little grainier. We then watched terrestrial tv, and the x10 was much better than the g10 for that. Then finally we watched a copy of iron man I'd taken along on normal dvd. On the x10 it looked better than on the g10, this playing through a sony 350 blueray player.
My conclusion after all that was unless I'm ready to invest heavily into a number of HD sources, the g10 wouldn't be worth the money in the short term. The x10 on the other hand was excellent for normal broadcast tv, did a great job of upscaling a dvd and was respectable for blueray content.
Food for thought.
So, after that lot, we went upstairs into the pj room to view the 5500.
WOW! Bloody amazing was all I could say
Straight out of the box, sat right next to my viewing position. I was viewing a massive screen with as good quality as the g10 from downstairs. I also couldn't even hear the pj, and it was about a foot away from my ear!The picture on blueray hd 1080p was brilliant, much much better than my poor sony vpl hs1 I've got atm.
No demo of tv on this though, but that wasn't a problem and not what I'd be buying it for anyway. However, as before, we ran the dark night on dvd through, and again it looked pretty damn good.
I am blown away by the quality of this unit which retails at not much more than the g10.
So, I've now got to make my mind up which to buy
I'd love both a g10 for day to day viewing and gaming, but I'd also need a blueray player, sky hd and all those associated costs, whereas the pj would just need a blueray player and I'd make do with my current panasonic crt and sky+ until I could afford the update to hd there. I think the pj has the edge atm though, as there's nothing to beat the bigscreen picture that only a pj can provide in a darkened room with 5.1 blasting your neighbours out!
A big thanks to David @ Roy Jowetts who knew this topic like the back of his hand, and answered all of my dumb questions with skill and knowledge.
I've heard similar good things about Roy Jowett over on the AVForums. You can't beat having a big screen for watching movies and a smaller (40-50") TV for day to day stuff IMHO. I have a JVC HD350 PJ and 112" wide 2.35:1 screen myself and an out of date (but servicable) 40" full HD Sony for TV duties. I never watch a film on the TV these days (apart from broadcast ones).
Just bear in mind that compared to the Plasma you will need to budget for a few accesories to go with the projector: Extra long HDMI cables to reach from your source(s) to the PJ, maybe a HDMI switch/AV amp, some kind of amp & speakers will be necessary and ideally a screen (though some people do manage using a white painted wall). Also to get a decent picture you need the lights off and to get rid of any ambient light from adjacent rooms and ideally the darker the wall colours the better (less reflected light to bounce back to your screen to wash out the image).
Also, the BluRay player was probably doing the upscaling of the DVD as it's generally easier to set them up this way (which is a pain if you have an external video processor like me).
Just bear in mind that compared to the Plasma you will need to budget for a few accesories to go with the projector: Extra long HDMI cables to reach from your source(s) to the PJ, maybe a HDMI switch/AV amp, some kind of amp & speakers will be necessary and ideally a screen (though some people do manage using a white painted wall). Also to get a decent picture you need the lights off and to get rid of any ambient light from adjacent rooms and ideally the darker the wall colours the better (less reflected light to bounce back to your screen to wash out the image).
Also, the BluRay player was probably doing the upscaling of the DVD as it's generally easier to set them up this way (which is a pain if you have an external video processor like me).
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